A Toast to the End of the World
by Cyn V
Summary: After Rin is publically executed in the middle of Konoha, Obito and Minato set out to free the village from the grip of its twisted Fourth Hokage, Orochimaru. - Warnings: Dark AU, character death.
1. Chapter 1

**Warnings:** _Dark AU! Character death! Lots of Orochimaru hating on the characters' part too._**  
****Disclaimer:** Naruto _(c) Kishimoto and probably a bunch of other companies whose names I don't know. No material profits being made here._

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**Part I:**

Obito's hands were shaking when he reached into his pocket to withdraw his house keys. Tears obscured his vision, but he could tell that the corridor outside his apartment was empty. He was thankful no one was around to witness the sorry state he was in.

As he struggled to untangle the keys from a loose thread from his pants, he was hit with the unexpected booming noise of some neighbour hammering a nail into a wall. It had him jumping out of his skin like a rabbit and tossing his keys like they had burned him. They landed three feet away from his door with a muffled thud. The inconvenience of walking that further distance and picking them up, though, was more than he could handle at the moment. He dropped to his knees and tried to hold back a sob, telling himself that if he started now he would not be able to stop.

He berated himself for his weakness and punched the floor next to him with determination. With that same hand, he reached up and wiped the tears from his eyes and the snot from his nose. He took a deep breath to pull himself together and got back on his feet. He was too close to the safety of his home to break down now. He picked up his keys and put them to the lock. By the time the ugly brown carpet of the corridor was replaced with the green one of his home and the door was shut at his back, he had himself under control once again.

Obito was relieved to hear the water running in the bathroom. The last thing he wanted to do was to go out and spend another moment with the cold-hearted population of Konoha. Monsters, all of them. Obito could not understand how they could so calmly walk away from the afternoon show like nothing had happened. He managed not to remind himself of how disgusted he had felt when he saw his family directing the spectacle. The only family he cared about now was in the bathroom, two rooms over.

"Is that you, Obito?"

Obito bit his lower lip to hold back a relieved cry at finally hearing a friendly voice. He heard the squeak of the old tap being turned off and then silence, until a cautious figure emerged from the far door to his right. Minato was keeping a hand casually hidden behind his back and his face was guarded beneath the blank veneer of a professional ninja. His expression melted into concern, though, as he took in the sight of his once student and current housemate leaning against the front door, looking three shades paler than normal and with tear tracks down his cheeks. Obito was compulsively worrying his hands.

Like Obito, Minato must have just arrived from a mission. He was halfway out of his ANBU uniform, still wearing dirty and blood-stained dark pants and a form-fitting shirt.

"What happened?" he asked as he approached.

Obito wanted to walk up to him, but he found himself unable to let go of the support of the heavy door behind him. The answer to Minato's question was so horrible that he was afraid reality would ram the door down and contaminate the shelter of the apartment if he let go. So, taking in a deep breath, the nineteen-year-old jounin waited for the other to reach him.

"Obito?" Minato was demanding now.

A vague memory of the rare instances in which his teacher had scolded him for doing something wrong during an assignment when he was younger flittered through his mind, before Obito clamped it down. He shook his head. He did not want to think about the old days right now.

Obito did not know if he could bear to hear a description of what had happened in the sound of his own voice, but he was also aware that he had no choice.

"I... I was... Rin... in the square..." the Uchiha floundered. "Rin... Rin's dead, sensei."

Even though Minato had told him that they were equals on the day that Obito had been promoted to jounin, he had never stopped referring to the blond who had taught him everything he knew as "sensei". Minato was not exactly like a father to him, but neither was he just a friend. He was sensei.

Seeing the disbelief on the man's face now was devastating. It only compounded on Obito's own shock and added an extra layer of guilt. Obito had failed to follow Minato's teachings; he had failed to protect a friend and a teammate.

"It was madness outside today, sensei..." He said it like it was some sort of macabre confession and he had been the one to pull the lever that had taken the floor from under his tied up friend's feet. "They... and the ANBU... they killed her and two others..."

Obito took a deep breath and sniffled. He had not realised he had started crying again.

"ANBU? But Rin is... Why would they do that?"

"I don't know... No one explained what was going on, they just rounded up everyone in the main square to watch the show," Obito's voice cracked on the last words.

Minato was shocked. Being an ANBU captain himself, despite his special position at the Hokage's personal beck and call, he knew public displays were strictly against protocol. He also wondered who the other "they" that Obito had mentioned before were, but thought it was better not to ask. It was hard enough to go over the basic facts without making the young man relive every detail.

"It was a public execution?"

Minato did not say anything as Obito nodded a confirmation, shedding enough tears for both of them. His heart skipped a beat as Obito's very visible grief drove home the fact that, yes, this was happening, but he let himself go no further than that. He was a ninja and had experienced enough tragedy to be beyond breaking down from emotion.

He closed his eyes as he imagined sweet, innocent Rin dead, shuffled off in a plastic bag by strangers to some unknown location where her eyes would dry, her flesh rot and her smile be forgotten. It would be business as usual for the team that would clear her body of any traces that might reveal village secrets. They had never known her kindness. They would not care to preserve her or choose a spot that she would have liked in the cemetery.

"Was she..." Minato started to ask but then stopped, unsure of what it was he wanted to ask. Was she tortured? Was she aware? Was she given the proper respect? Was she caught doing something she should not have been doing? Did any of it matter or would thinking about it just make her death harder to bear? Nothing would bring back the lovely Rin.

Minato clenched his fists and told himself to move on. He could ask all the questions he wanted, but it would not change a thing. He could run down to ANBU headquarters and demand to be told about what had happened - he was the Hokage's Hand; he had the authority. But, deep down, he already knew the truth. He had killed plenty of people whom he suspected to be innocent himself. The truth was that the Hokage did as it pleased him and his ninja obeyed.

"Will there be a funeral?"

Obito's head snapped up to look at his teacher. He could not believe that his teacher was being so accepting. The resigned voice, the mournful look: did he care so little for Rin that it was that easy for him to put the horror of what had just happened behind him?

"A funeral? Is that all you have to say? Rin is dead, sensei! Rin!" he shouted. "Those bastards killed her!"

"Be careful what you say, Obito," Minato warned, speaking slowly and casting a wary eye in the direction of the single window in the room. "ANBU are at the Hokage's command and his commands are absolute. To every ninja."

Obito processed the words for a moment. His hands had gone back to shaking, but for a very different reason this time. He was doing his best not to punch through the wall in disbelief. This could not be his sensei.

He could not believe that Minato could be siding with the Hokage while, in his mind's eye, all Obito could see was Rin, scared and bound and gaze locked on his, until...

"You can't be serious!" Obito growled. "How can you... They killed Rin in cold blood!"

"Let go, Obito. You're a ninja, just as I am. There's no room for that kind of emotion in our lives unless you want to be branded a traitor and get yourself killed."

Minato's eyes were solid chips of ice as Obito looked at him. The Uchiha had always had trouble following that particular rule. Ninja were supposed to be emotionless tools, at the service of their village, their Hokage and their fellow ninja, but try as he might Obito had never been able to put aside his feelings. He always felt like he was killing part of himself and becoming less when he tried. He had always been driven by passion and it was what spurred him on to be better and do better. In time, his teacher had come to accept that and stopped trying to drill the book of regulations into him. Minato had praised him for forging his own path. To have that thrown at his face now was insulting.

"Better off dead than being any part of this!"

His body was aching from repressed fury, begging him to take action, while his mind told him that he should just take Minato's advice and accept the sorry spectacle he had witnessed on the public square in front of the Hokage Tower. His heart, on the other hand, was urging him to trash all the promises and oaths he had made throughout his career and do what he knew was right, even if it meant destroying the village that had birthed him in the process.

"I'm warning you, Obito. If anyone heard what you're saying right now, you'd be the one with the knife stuck in your gut," Minato said, eyes jumping between the door and the windows. He did not know how he could possibly help his student if any unwanted ears heard the commotion.

Obito could have punched him. Instead, he stomped out into the middle of the living room and took his anger out on the coffee table. He kicked it into the bookcase, and when the scrolls, magazines and weapon catalogues tumbling onto the ground failed to satisfy his need for chaos, he kicked the broken pieces. A bottle of oil to dim the metallic gleam of weapons shattered, splattering liquid black on the wall and the carpet. The wood of the coffee table splintered on his foot. He ripped all his favourite manga in a blind rage and it still was not enough.

When Minato was convinced it had gone on long enough, he grasped Obito's arm and pulled him back, making a point to hurt him with his tight grip and to twist the fool's shoulder until the articulation strained against its limit. He pushed him onto the couch and stared at him calmly.

"Have you had enough?"

Obito begged him with his eyes.

"They killed Rin!"

"I know," Minato consoled.

"They actually did it... she's... I'll never see her again..."

The dam Obito had been trying to contain finally broke. He had plenty of tears left to water his sorrow and enough fuel to keep his grief and his anger blazing for a long while. Minato felt like an intruder, watching his grown student break apart. He laid a hand on Obito's shoulder, but otherwise tried kept a distance. He eyed the mess Obito had made of the coffee table on the other side of the room and waited it out.

"They were there, you know. The military police." Obito's voice rose up, nasally and muffled. "The bastard running the show was my cousin Yashiro."

Minato glanced at Obito. His eyes were swollen and red, focused in the distance, lost in memories.

"I begged him to stop. I told him what they were doing was crazy... I shouted and pleaded and fought them, but in the end it was all for nothing. They went through with it anyway."

That little confession caught Minato's attention. He hoped Obito had been smart enough to keep his mouth in check. He had already lost two students. One more and he would be left all alone.

"This cousin, Yashiro... I see him often at the police station when I go in to work. I bought him a coffee once to be friendly. That bastard." Obito's mouth twisted like he had bit into something sour. "He disgusts me. And the rest of them. The lot of them disgust me. To think that I had been trying to be a part of that family..."

"Obito..." Minato sighed and sat down next to the Uchiha.

Obito's issues with his family were a recurring problem. He had moved in to stay with Minato when those issues had become too serious to keep under one roof and their living arrangements had soon become permanent. Minato had encouraged him to try to keep in touch with other members of his clan, if not his immediate family, but Obito had never made much progress. It did not look like he ever would now.

"They killed Rin," the Uchiha stated with a newfound strength and shifted to stare at Minato. "I'm going to kill Orochimaru."

Chills went down Minato spine. "That's crazy talk, Obito. Stop it."

"What about Naruto?" the black-haired young man continued. "Are you okay with what happened to him? Someone has to stop that snake! And with Rin gone and you and me being the only ones left of the team, I don't really have anything to lose any more, sensei."

"Trust me, Obito. You have a lot to lose."

Obito reached into the pouch by his belt and pulled out his police badge. He had little more authority than a rookie, but all badges looked the same to anyone outside the police force. "I could get into the Tower with this. I could say I'm on some errand, maybe even throw Yashiro's name around, and get close enough to the Hokage."

"Obito, put those thoughts out of your head. They will do you no good." Minato was getting seriously scared now. He had to keep his student's imagination from gaining momentum.

"It will just be a matter of putting him under the Sharingan and killing him," Obito argued before his eyes gained an even more feverish light. "Or... I could put him under the Sharingan and make him feel the pain he's causing others. Then I'd kill him. Yes, that would be better..." he drifted off into a mutter.

Minato shook him harshly until he was sure he had his student's attention. "You will do no such thing!"

With Minato's grounding gaze steadily locked on him, Obito's rational half surfaced once again and he let go of his badge. "Sensei... I've got to do something. This isn't right!"

Minato knew Obito did not stand a chance against Orochimaru. He tried to imagine what it would feel like if the blood still clinging to his clothes had belonged to Obito rather than some nameless chuunin, and shuddered. Orochimaru was a ruthless tyrant. He had played his cards well to gain the position of Hokage and Minato would rather not receive more orders to take out any more worthy ninjas of Konoha, especially not if they had his student's name on them.

Obito was right about one thing, though. In truth, they had little to lose. They had already sold their souls to the devil and he could not let Obito face the danger alone. His reckless student would get himself killed before any good could come of his actions.

"No, it's not," Minato agreed, "but if we are going to do anything, we are going to do it right. You will do as I say."

Obito's eyes widened and, had his Sharingan been active, they would have been spinning in fast circles to interpret all the nuances of his teacher's grimace.

"You mean you'll help me?"

"Yes."

Where Obito had been desperate before, now he was confident. With Minato's help, there was nothing they could not do. The snake who called himself Hokage had his days numbered.

The young Uchiha would see to it that no one else suffered because of him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Part II:**

Obito didn't think for more than two seconds before volunteering to clear out Rin's office.

He'd had to do some favours for his colleagues at the Interrogation Department of the police force so he could have the afternoon off, and while some of those would definitely come back to bite him in the future, it had been a small price to pay for the certainty that Rin's things would not be dumped in the nearest garbage container. As an extra, if he lucked out - if the reason Rin had been sentenced to death was because she had discovered something that she was not supposed to know - he and Minato would have some sort of physical evidence they could use against Orochimaru or to convince others to join their cause.

He'd known that it would be a painful task - Rin had loved to surround herself with photos and had a habit of keeping and treasuring the stupidest things (like that water bottle she'd bought on their first mission as genin that she liked to use to put flowers on), so the place was sure to be full of memories. What he hadn't expected was for his chest to constrict as soon as he stepped foot in the hospital and smelled the mix of disinfectant and medicine.

Rin's clothes had carried that scent wherever she went and it was so characteristic of her that the Uchiha was half convinced that she would come out from one of the hallways in a hurry at any moment, clipboard in hand with info about the latest patient and a pack of medics-in-training on her tail, listening to her every word like chicks following the mother hen. He hadn't been able to help but feel a bit envious of those interns who got to spend so much time with the girl of his dreams, time he had no way to recover now, but he couldn't blame them for wanting to be close to her either. She had been an excellent doctor and, most importantly, the kindest person he knew.

Obito closed his eyes on that image and forced himself to walk past the threshold. He was blocking the entrance.

The black-haired jounin pulled up his orange goggles to lay atop his forehead protector as he crossed the cold shadow cast by the bronze statue of the Hokage dominating the hospital lobby. The fan over the shuriken symbol of the police force on his clothes was easily recognised and as such he had no trouble getting Rin's old keys from the ninja on duty at the reception.

If the hospital smell hadn't hit him already, Rin's off-colour key-chain (a plastic hippo that Obito had convinced Kakashi to buy for her birthday because he thought its little pink apron looked just like the girl's usual attire) would have put him in tears. Numbed by the strangeness and unfairness that everything seemed to remain the same even though Rin was no longer there, however, he settled for removing the figurine from the loop and pocketing it after thumbing the little purple stripes that he himself had drawn on the animal's cheeks so many years ago.

The hospital staff hadn't wasted any time removing the name plaque from the door to Rin's office, but the room beyond it was the same as ever. The bottle-come-vase (carrying a pair of plain, white daisies) was in its usual place on top of the metallic cabinet containing the records of previous patients and study materials (he knew this because he had often brought Rin food when she was working late) and the pair of giant, fluffy, flower-patterned pillows that had belonged to her grandparents (and which he liked to nap on when he came in for her to patch up) rested on the window sill. The desk was clear but for a couple of picture frames and one yellow folder, which Obito tackled before he got too caught up in memories.

The documents looked innocent enough - a simple medical history detailing past ailments and personal information like age, weight-height ratio and a full blood analysis. The brown-haired ninja on the photo clipped to the front page did not look familiar to Obito, but the fact that his name had been blacked out led him to put the picture into his weapons pouch all the same. Maybe Minato would know who the man was.

The cause of admittance was buried under a lot of medical babble that made no sense to Obito. That too he folded into a tiny square and took with him to attempt to translate later.

He checked the two drawers on the desk and the cabinet, but nothing else caught his attention, so he moved on to unfold the cardboard box that someone had left there for his use. He got to work packing Rin's things - her pillows, her photos, her spare clothes...

The task took longer than it probably should and, by the time Obito was back out on the street, the sun was down and his orange goggles were in place to cover a redness in his eyes that had nothing to do with the Sharingan.

It was a cold night and the box he carried was heavy, so he headed for the nearest bar. He wasn't in the mood for anything more than a sandwich and he could use a drink.

**o**

While Obito went to the hospital, Minato thought to take a walk around the village to get himself reacquainted with the peaceful environment.

As an ANBU Captain, and Orochimaru's favourite puppet, his duties often took him to far away lands for weeks on end and when he returned, it wasn't unusual to find another mission already waiting for him. He hadn't kept track of how many days off he'd had since Orochimaru had become Hokage, but he was sure that if he put his mind to it he would be able to recall them individually. To say he was exhausted, mentally and physically, was a gross understatement but somehow, whenever the periodical medical exams came around, his physical and mental assessments always stated him to be in "top form".

On the surface, Konoha looked just like it used to in his teen years. Some shops had come and gone and some walls had been repainted since, but the buildings were the same. The people too had remained, but unlike the houses they differed in more that just the added wrinkles and white hair.

He was currently at the market place, making his way to the central square in front of the Tower. It had always been a busy place come market day, with improvised stalls on either side of the street eating up half the road and blocking about a half dozen house doors per block. The Konoha police had always assigned a particularly large amount of ninja to supervise it, as there had never been a shortage of irritated civilians or pickpockets trying to take advantage of the chaos.

Today was not a market day, but the place was so clean that it was obvious that it had been a long time since any vendors had set up shop there. The streets were almost empty (save for one shopkeeper sweeping the front of his store and a pair of women who walked past him pointedly not making any sort of eye contact, no one was out at that hour), but one glance towards the roofs was enough for him to make out the hidden military police scrutinizing the area with blazing Sharingans. Their numbers were greater than they had been on any given market day too.

As the only ninja outside, and therefore single source of danger in sight, their eyes had converged on him instantly and Minato could almost feel their weight boring down on him. He frowned, inwardly trying to appease the paranoia that kept him safe from enemies out on the field.

It was a vain attempt. He knew he wasn't safe - no one was. Not even Rin.

That was the reason why those who were not working or at school at this hour did not leave their houses unless strictly necessary and, like those women who had passed him by, if they had to, that trip was done as quietly and as quickly as possible, preferably with one companion for reassurance - but no more than one, as the rules imposed by the Hokage clearly stated that any suspicious-looking groups would be taken in for questioning by the police.

The Uchiha were Orochimaru's strongest supporters. Their discontent with how the village was run went all the way back to the foundation of Konoha, when their former leader Madara Uchiha had been put aside in favour of Hashirama Senju for the role of Hokage. They hadn't been happy about taking orders from the clan who had been their greatest enemy, but they had complied for the sake of ending a bloody war. That sentiment had never quite vanished, though, as generation after generation the candidates for the title of Hokage coming from their clan had been turned down. They were granted a seat of power on the Council table and virtually full control over the Konoha police force, but it seemed that the Hokage hat had always been out of reach.

Orochimaru had known this and it had not taken much to convince the head of the Uchiha to support his appointment as Hokage. Now, they ran the village alongside the snake.

Realising he was not about to find the peace he had been hoping for, Minato picked up his pace. He didn't once glance at the monument with the four sculpted faces of the Hokages and did his best to avoid drawing the attention of any more policemen. He just let his feet take him where they pleased and tried to replace the tense atmosphere with what he remembered from the Sandaime's days in his imagination.

Eventually, he found himself in front of the humble house where Rin's elderly grandmother lived. Steeling himself for a long afternoon, he knocked on the door.


	3. Chapter 3

**Part III:**

He really hated sake, Obito decided as he asked the bartender for another bottle.

He swirled the remaining clear liquid in his cup one more time before downing it in one gulp. The taste was awful (he scrunched up his face) and the alcohol burned all the way down to his stomach. It was making him feel drowsy and numb - like it was too much trouble to ever get off the uncomfortable little stool he sat on and like there weren't many good reasons to do so anyway - which kind of defeated the purpose for going to that bar in the first place.

From the few occasions he had seen his teacher drink more than he should (and they had all been directly caused by Jiraiya), he knew that Minato was hysterical when he got drunk. The mighty Yellow Flash was reduced to a goofy, silly kid and lost all traces of ruthless ninja composure. His emotions overflowed and he became so innocent and earnest, that whoever was around him could not help but take pity, drag him to his house and put him to bed. (Tucking in the sheets was optional and Obito was not admitting that he had never done it.)

Kakashi had handled it better, but then again Obito had never seen him as far gone as Minato. The most the drink would do was make his white-haired teammate comfortable enough to leave his mask down between sips and, on rare occasions, send a few sparks of emotion into his grey eyes.

As for Rin - he swallowed dry and looked around for that lazy bartender -, Obito had actually never seen her drink. Truth be told, as the only girl on the team, they were all so protective of her that any of them would have beaten down any fool who so much as placed a cup in front of her. (Well, Obito would have let his fists do the talking; Minato and Kakashi would have probably been more sensible.)

Obito, on the other hand, became just the opposite of his teacher. It was a strange sight to behold because he was usually so cheerful and energetic, but sake just sucked all that optimism out of him and left him depressed. He had been hoping that, just this once, the results would have been different - but that was not to be. The only up side to how miserable he felt now was that at least he would have an easier time falling asleep, unlike the previous night.

He would be slumping down for a nap a lot sooner than he'd like if he didn't put his self-commiseration on hold, in fact, and so he looked up to appraise his surroundings, hoping to find something to distract him.

The bar was sparsely populated. No one else had come in since his arrival and the few patrons who had already been there were scattered throughout the room, leaving wide empty space between them and no misunderstandings about whether or not they were in the mood for talking. They kept to themselves, but there were a couple of men sitting in one of the booths who were giving the Uchiha some strangely interested looks.

Obito frowned. The sake made him forget that he was staring at them openly, and so he was even more intrigued when they turned away and adopted airs of nonchalance, like nothing had happened.

The back of his mind was tingling, telling him that he knew those two from somewhere, but their names were just out of reach. He didn't care about the strangers enough to strain his memory, though, and so he let them drop out from his awareness.

Unfortunately, the stares were not an unusual occurrence. At first they had come with the family name and then they had gotten worse once he'd joined the police force.

He sighed and sank a bit further into his seat. Rin's belongings were on the next stool and he still didn't know what to do about them.

**o**

It wasn't the first time Minato visited Rin's grandmother. When he had been assigned his genin team, he had made it a point to visit the kids' families and talk to their parents, even before he met his students. In Rin's case, since both of her parents had died on a mission while she had still been at the Academy, he had gone to see her guardian instead: her grandmother.

The elderly woman was surprisingly composed when she opened the door, holding herself straight with dignity. The jounin had perhaps expected to find clearer evidence of distress and grief, but her almond eyes didn't even show signs of redness when she invited him in and directed him to a couch.

They made small talk for a few moments and covered all the niceties before broaching the subject which both knew to be at the heart of the visit. Minato didn't want to be the one to bring up the delicate subject in case she wasn't ready to discuss it.

"I was there, you know," she finally said. "I saw the whole thing. I had gone out to buy ingredients for dinner, because I'd realised that all I had left in the pantry was my stored tsukudani. Rin hated tsukudani..."

The old woman paused and stared off into space for a bit like she was trying to muster the courage to start talking again - or maybe she was just caught up remembering her granddaughter and some past incident involving the seafood dish. Again, he waited and let her set the pace of the conversation.

"When the word spread that there was going to be some sort of public execution, I just knew in my heart that something was wrong. I knew something terrible was going to happen to Rin, but I never thought that..." she cut herself off, unable to help the few tears that leaked from her eyes. "She was always telling me not to worry about her, that she was invaluable to the village as a medic and that she was never even sent on away missions any more..."

"I'm sorry for your loss," Minato said, knowing the words helped so very little. "Rin was a lovely girl."

"She was loyal... why did they kill her...?"

He was seeing a lot of his late student's mannerisms reflected in the way her grandmother wrung her hands on her lap and kept her legs together at the knees and slanted to the side. She was refusing to cry, but anguish was written all over her body language. It was so much like what Rin had done when a mission had gone bad that old feelings of protectiveness for his students arose in Minato and took him back to a time when the burden on his shoulders did not feel as heavy.

"If you ever need anything, all you need do is ask," he offered.

She leaned forward to rest a hand on his knee and the small, grateful smile that lit her features was so _Rin's _that for a moment he let himself believe he was actually talking to the girl. "Thank you."

Minato left the house some time afterwards, by late afternoon. He wasn't feeling any better or any more at peace with what had happened to his student, but for the moment he had done all that he could.

An ANBU dropped next to him on the sidewalk. He was not surprised, aware that someone had been watching him closely for some time.

"The Hokage wants to see you, sir," was his message.

Minato nodded and the courier was gone as fast as he had arrived.

It was time to face the snake.

**o**

By the time Obito left the bar, the moon was high and most of the lights inside the houses had gone out already. He had half a mind to just drop Rin's box and drag it along home with his feet. The sake, however, hadn't affected him badly enough that he would risk damaging any of the more frail items, and so he set out at an easy pace back home.

He didn't run across anyone else outside, but he could not shake the feeling that eyes were on him. It might have been a remnant of the stares he'd gotten at the bar from the rest of the patrons or maybe some police squad on night patrol really was out there somewhere making sure nothing happened to him on his way.

When one lived in a hidden village, one got used to the feeling of being watched. It was a necessity in a world as dangerous as theirs, as it allowed off-duty ninjas to lower their guards and rest easy in their homes, secure in the knowledge that someone was out in the shadows ensuring no enemies came near.

It was the reason Obito had joined the police force. He had joined because of his family too, hoping to put to rest some of the old conflicts that had driven him away from his home with the Uchiha (and, so far, that wasn't going very well), but the wish to look out for his fellow ninja had been his one true motivation.

He was surprised, therefore, when someone dropped a few meters in front of him without previous warning.

He shifted the weight of the box so he could hold it with one hand, while the other moved to hover close to the weapons pouch at his back. Obito relaxed somewhat when he realised the stranger was wearing a Konoha forehead protector, but, after Orochimaru had taken over as Hokage - after what had happened to Rin -, that sight had stopped meaning what it had once used to.

"Obito Uchiha?" the stranger asked.

The nineteen-year-old still couldn't see the other's face, but he confirmed his own identity anyway.

"You were Rin's teammate, right? That lady doctor that was killed yesterday?"

Obito's jaw clenched at the casual way her name was brought up and at the indifferent tone in which the words were spoken. As soon as he could see the other man's face, he'd land a kick in the middle of it and break all of his sacrilegious teeth. This time, he nodded his reply.

"Oh, good..." the stranger said, stepping forward so the street light reached his face.

The Uchiha gasped. It was the brown-haired man from the file on Rin's office.

"Listen, this is going to sound weird, but I need to ask you a favour..."

Obito didn't give the man a chance to finish. His punch flew faster than lightning, and after he'd made sure that the other's nose would never again be straight, he clutched his flak vest and slammed him against the nearest wall.

"What the hell did you do to her?"


	4. Chapter 4

**Part IV:**

"I am very pleased at your accomplishments, Minato."

The addressed blond knelt in the middle of the Hokage's office in full ANBU garb, eyes on the floor. Even though he could not see Orochimaru's face, those few sibilating words painted a clear enough picture in his head of the yellow-eyed reptile he was, leaning back on his chair and basking in the red glow of the setting sun coming in through the panoramic windows behind him.

After seeing Rin's grandmother, the events of the previous day were very fresh in Minato's mind. No one was allowed to look the Hokage in the eye or speak unless they were answering a direct question and, for once, these self-glorification tactics worked to the jounin's advantage, as he wasn't sure if he could keep the revulsion off his face if he had to lay eyes on the sickening pale man behind the desk.

The question of how the leader of Konoha could have found out about his "accomplishments" did not even cross his mind, despite the fact that he had not yet officially reported since returning from his latest mission. Minato knew that there were spies and that Orochimaru made it a point to put them to use on enemy and ally alike. He would never let someone as potentially dangerous as him run about unchecked, no matter how many reasons his subordinate had not to do anything that might count as rebellious.

Minato closed his eyes on that line of thought.

"You have done me a great service. The scroll?"

One of the members of the Hokage's personal ANBU squad stepped forward at once to stand between the two men and collect the item. His secondary objective was to shield Orochimaru in case Minato produced something other than the intended item from the pouch at his belt. The blond was intimately aware of this because that ninja's position had once been his.

Doing his best not to look at the smudges of blood on the paper, Minato silently deposited the scroll he had been ordered to retrieve into one clawed black glove and waited.

"Good, very good..." Orochimaru purred, breaking the wax seal and going over the contents.

After learning of what had happened to Rin, Minato had debated whether or not to risk opening that scroll to find out what kind of secrets Orochimaru considered important enough to warrant sending the Yellow Flash to hunt down one of their own chuunin. Ultimately, he had decided against it. The Hokage was smart and Minato had too much to lose.

His target's name had been Tonbo Tobitake, a green but promising ninja who used to keep his head wrapped in bandages to hide the damage he had received after getting trapped in a house fire on the night the Nine-tailed fox had attacked. That had been five years ago and Tonbo had been an extraordinary enough ninja that he had overcome his blindness. He had asked to be transferred to the Intelligence Department, where he might work his skills and limitations to the fullest.

If that did not speak of the man's dedication, Minato did not know what did. The shame he felt for killing him - and other fellow Konoha ninjas - would never leave him for as long as he lived. Nothing would erase their faces from his memory, but, if he could go back in time, Minato would still have changed nothing. He had a very good reason to do Orochimaru's bidding, a tiny blond five-year-old reason whom he would gladly go to hell for.

"One more thing, Minato. I was told that your student caused quite the commotion during the executions yesterday. See to it that it doesn't happen again. Tobitake was a nobody, but I would hate to have to do something to one of my Uchiha."

"Understood, Lord Hokage," the blond said around the knot that had suddenly formed at his throat. Not for the first time, he was glad that Obito's heritage had protected him from his rashness. The Sharingan was a powerful reason for Orochimaru to keep him alive.

"You're dismissed."

Minato complied, but as he walked past the two ANBU guarding the door, he promised himself that the next time he saw Orochimaru, it would be under very different circumstances. He was done playing the part of the obedient little tool and turning a blind eye on the way things were run.

He just had one more thing to do while he was in the Tower for now.

Removing his black gloves and armoured gauntlets along with his ANBU mask, he turned into a seldom-used corridor on the same floor as the Hokage's office. Another pair of ANBU stood guarding the passage and even though they let him pass, Minato still felt their eyes watching his every move.

His feet carried him to a door he knew well. At a first glance, it was identical to all the others next to it but the steady pulse of massive amounts of live chakra just beyond it made it unmistakeable. Minato twisted the doorknob and walked into the heavily painted room - a seal unto itself - and towards the sole occupant inside, held upright at the centre by shackles and chains and thick paper binds with even more complex seals written on them.

"Naruto..."

**o**

"What did you do to get her killed?" Obito asked again, shaking the brown-haired man in his grasp when he didn't start talking right away as if that would dislodge the answers he wanted out into the open.

"Hey, calm down, man... take it easy." His voice was meek, choked by the abundant blood running down his nose and throat. Like a predator sensing weakness in his prey, Obito held on to the collar of his vest that much more tightly.

"'Take it easy'? Did you tell that to Rin when the damned ANBU took her to the gallows?"

The other's eyes widened in fear. Obito had not realised it yet but his Sharingan had activated involuntarily and it was the first time that the other ninja was getting to see it up close. Both eyes were spinning, as wildly as their user's emotions, just like he had heard in the stories. The only difference was that the three black tomoes seemed to be changing, expanding towards the centre pupil to form a much more menacing shape of hard angles and sharp points.

"You're going to tell me everything you know, right now, starting with your name!"

"Genma... Shiranui..." the words left his lips before he could think them.

"Well, Genma Shiranui, how the hell did you know Rin?" Obito asked, punctuating his question with one more shove against the hard wall.

Genma recognised that he was being drawn into the Uchiha clan's hypnotising brand of genjutsu, but he was powerless to resist it. He could not even bring himself to raise a hand to try to free himself from the painful hold or wipe the blood dripping from his broken nose. All he could do was watch the wicked shuriken-like shape of this twisted Sharingan and take note of the pervasive darkness at the edges of his sight while his mouth took on a will of its own.

"She took care of my injuries when I had to go to the Hospital after a mission."

"That doesn't explain why..."

"Is everything all right here, boss?"

Obito's shouting vanished as quickly as the red from his eyes. The jounin eased back from Genma to face the police patrol who had interrupted his tirade.

"Yeah, it's okay," he told the three. He recognised their faces, although he had only seen them a couple of times at headquarters. Those who worked during the night were practically a department of their own. "Everything's fine."

Seeing Obito's uniform and that he was the one holding the other ninja, the Uchiha policemen were reassured and moved on their way. Obito, on the other hand, was suddenly remembering his teacher's warnings. He could not be so impulsive - at least not in public.

Genma also shifted from side to side, struggling against Obito's grip as he tried to see if anyone else was watching.

"This was a mistake," he said. "I shouldn't have come..."

"Oh no, oh hell no! I'm not letting you go until you tell me everything. We're going to my place to finish this."

Genma was looking distinctively pale, but he reminded himself that he had to go along if he ever wanted to discuss the actual subject that had led him to seek out the Uchiha.

The box full of flowers and pictures and definitely feminine clothes was still lying on the ground where it had been dropped, and his attention was drawn to a particular patient's file with the Konoha Hospital stamp on it that was peeking out of the side.

Genma would have told Obito to lead the way, if the other had given him enough time to do so before shoving him onwards. He almost stabbed himself on the inside of his mouth with the metal needle he liked to chew on. He thought about throwing it at the Uchiha's ass while he was bent to pick up the doctor's box, just to relieve some of his annoyance and return some of the treatment that had been inflicted on him, but decided against it in the end.

Whatever those shuriken-eyes had been, they were scary and they were not normal. He would be content never to see them again.


	5. Chapter 5

**Part V:**

Minato lay down in the dark and plotted.

The faint glowing chakra trace of a massive web of seals sprawled across the walls of the closed room provided the only source of light. It was barely enough to make out the shape of the small boy resting against his chest, but his identity was no mystery: light hair and frail features, smooth in deep sleep under his father's warm hand. Naruto.

In a way, the eldest of the two blonds was grateful for the concealing darkness. His mind's eye had a clear enough view of the state his child was in without need for live verification: wrists, ankles and neck torn and bloody, lips chapped and cracked from dehydration, skin almost grey and a body so thin and brittle that his weight hardly registered.

It also came as a small blessing that the five-year-old had taken to sleep so peacefully once Minato had freed him from the binds the Hokage of Konoha constantly kept him in. The blank, uncomprehending stare that inhabited those large eyes, the same shade of blue as his, would have been perhaps worse to endure than all the physical evidence of neglect.

The jounin forced his thoughts to go elsewhere, though. He could consider the rainbows and sunny futures where he made up to his son a million times after he had figured out a way to end Orochimaru's reign.

One thing was certain: if he and Obito wanted to remove the Hokage, they would have to free Naruto at some point.

The seal that Minato himself had inscribed on the boy's stomach at birth, which had cost the lives of dozens of Konoha ninjas and prisoners that Orochimaru had ordered to sacrifice to save their village, had done its job in absorbing the Nine-tailed fox and melding its chakra with Naruto's, leaving the five-year-old with more energy than he could hope to use in a lifetime. The Hokage tried, with some success: the crude seals encompassing the chamber were designed to channel that massive chakra into powering a ninjutsu shield that protected the Tower and to purify it so the snake summoner could use it himself.

The Tower was untouchable as long as that shield was up and, with access to the Nine-tails's power, so was Orochimaru.

And so Minato lay down in the dark and plotted. He spent the night petting his son's hair while silently decoding the script glowing around and above him, one symbol at a time.

**o**

As soon as the apartment door closed behind Obito, he was all over Genma again.

"Start talking," he commanded.

Genma eyed the remains of a coffee table pushed against the corner, but he was much surer of himself now that he'd had the time to get a grip on his nerves.

"I'm not sure what it is you want me to say, man," Genma said smoothly. He pointed at the box Obito had dropped as soon as he had stepped foot into the house. "I just came to talk to you about that little thing right there."

"What about it?"

"I need my medical records back. I'm supposed to return them to the Hospital's registry." He looked about to move to pluck the yellow folder from the container, but the Uchiha calmly stepped in his path.

"Nice try, but you forget that I was Rin's teammate. I know all about Hospital procedures and I know that no one but the medical personnel are allowed to even touch patient records."

"How come you're holding them then?" Genma asked, smiling, pleased that he had apparently outwitted the Uchiha. The feeling vanished, though, when Obito's gaze intensified, like an eagle spreading its wings and showing the mouse that it really wasn't its place to play games.

"Because I want to know why my friend is dead and I was hoping you could tell me."

"I can't..." Genma shook his head and hoped he would not be confronted with that strange morphing Sharingan a second time.

Silence settled between them.

"I want him gone. Orochimaru," Obito clarified, voice earnest, deciding to do a complete 180 on his approach. "I've always known the things he did were wrong, that he was bad, but I kept my head down and tried to forget about it. I was only fourteen when he was appointed, what did I know?"

He chanced a look at Genma, but found no signs of empathy there. The needle-chewing chuunin's face was blank and Obito ran a hand through his hair to look for the strength to continue his explanation.

"But now... Rin was a wonderful girl. I loved her and I never got to tell her. She was everything to me and it hurts so much that we weren't talking as much in the end. It hurts to think that we had been arguing the last time we actually spoke, that maybe she died believing that I didn't care about her, that I was just as bad as Orochimaru and the rest of the Uchiha...

"So you have to tell me what you know, because I can't stand this any more. I want them gone, so that maybe... maybe Rin will see it from wherever she is and know that her death was not in vain. That she helped make the world a better place."

Tears were swimming in Obito's eyes and the emotion was choking his throat. He waited for Genma, who was suddenly looking more beaten than when the Uchiha had been physically going at him, to respond.

"You realise what you're saying is treason?"

"Yes." And the word had never tasted sweeter to the black-haired jounin.

"Then I think I can tell you what the pretty doctor was up to."

**o**

Obito had to wait until the next day for Genma to actually share the truth with him. It was bad enough that the two of them had been caught at each other's throats in the middle of the night by a police patrol. If they had been seen sneaking around the poorer areas of Konoha after that, suspicions would not have been so easily put aside with Obito's word alone.

The chuunin set a meeting for that afternoon, after the Uchiha's shift at the police was over. After that, he led the way into an old residence on the periphery of the village.

"There's one thing you have to understand before we go in," Genma explained, sounding extremely nasally through the bandages around his nose. "You might be surprised by some of the things you see and hear, but it's important that you keep your mouth shut."

"Whatever," Obito dismissed. "Just get on with the show, already!"

Genma started and hissed at him to be quiet, then spent the next few seconds looking every which way to make sure no one had overheard them. Once the rattled chuunin was certain that there were no eyes hiding in the dark and that all the windows were empty, he grabbed the Uchiha's arm and pulled him down the steps that led into the residence's basement.

The temperature grew progressively warmer as the two made their way down and the white light of the sun was slowly replaced by the dimmer, secretive yellow of candlelight. The air tasted of moist and mould, but the sound of voices at the end of the stairs spoke of occupation.

Obito was about to ask for more information about where he was being taken to (Kakashi had always been the cautious one, while he preferred to go with the flow, but this once he had to admit his former teammate's approach sounded like the better one), when the sight that greeted Genma and him made the question void.

The laws in the handbook he had had to memorise when he had first been sworn into the police were popping in Obito's head one after another.

_Assemblies are forbidden. _The whole basement was full of ninja. At the front row, exposing their concerns and complaints about the state of Konoha were a handful of some of the most notorious clan leaders that Obito could recognise without even wanting to: the Sarutobi, the Inuzuka, the Akimichi, even the Hyuuga. Most of the major clans were represented there, natural leaders for the many ninja whose names bore no weight on the ruling of the Konoha upstairs.

_Dispersion of classified information is forbidden. _The current spokesman, a Nara by the bored look of him, was pointing out target after target on a detailed map of the Hokage Tower and describing a sort of attack plan to hit the building and take out every member of the high council, including Orochimaru.

_Conspiracy against the Hokage is punishable by death._

Obito gulped. His heart swelled with added respect for his late teammate's courage, but at the same time he was saddened that she apparently hadn't trusted him enough to let him in on the existence of such a rebellion.

"Oh, Rin..."


	6. Chapter 6

**Part VI:**

Rin came to in a cold room, gasping and reaching for her throat. The noose around her neck was gone but she did not realise it; the young medic still felt the coarse rope burning her skin and crushing and constricting her airways. Each breath was a small victory, until it finally registered that her hands were grasping at nothing but her own skin, and that there was no actual impediment to her breathing other than the horror of near death that still haunted her mind.

She cried then like she had not had the chance to do so before. It had all happened so fast. Only minutes had gone from the moment the ANBU had stormed her office and grabbed her to when the nightmare had become real and the floor disappeared from under her feet. There had been no time to cry even though she had been so afraid... afraid for herself and for all her friends who might be implicated with her crime, regardless of guilt.

Which led her to the biggest question: how was she still alive?

She did not remember much of her final moments, only Obito. Her friend had not been there at first, but she had seen him fight his way to the front of the crowd. He had raged at the guards surrounding the wooden scaffold that the Uchiha police had constructed in the middle of the main square and demanded that they release Rin. They were making a mistake, he had shouted. Rin was a good person and completely innocent. She was a good and loyal ninja.

He had been crying for her too, she remembered. Then again, Obito had always been quick to tears. In the end, after all his efforts had failed, he had gotten as close to her as he could and held her gaze, keeping her company and sharing the burden of her fate. Her pain must have been evident, for he had soon activated his sharingan and lulled her into a sleepy genjutsu where there was nothing but the two of them - no ANBU, no gallows, no burn of suffocation and no fear; just peace. His red gaze had accompanied her all the way up to the gates of the after life.

She hoped that he had not gotten in trouble for arguing with the Hokage's guard and that he was doing all right. She also hoped that what he had told her one day about his sharingan allowing him to retain memories as sharp and vivid as on the day the events had taken place was not true. She was aware of the young man's deep feelings for her and she would hate to be a cause of grief for him.

"Well, Sarutobi-sensei?" Rin froze as she heard the voice coming from behind her. "What do you think?"

The other took some time to answer, and the young medic took advantage of that pause to get up and turn around. Her eyes widened as she saw Orochimaru smirking her way, looking very pleased with himself. The previous Hokage was standing next to him, hands clasped behind his back and looking very out of place in the gloomy stone chamber.

The fear that must have radiated off of her further amused the current Hokage, sending him into a slight chuckle.

"You are truly twisted, my former pupil," the wizened Hiruzen Sarutobi commented, a dull expression on his wrinkled face.

Orochimaru's mood darkened instantly. He almost grew a few centimetres as he turned to the side, his back straight and mad enough to hit his elder. Rin did not know what stayed his hand, but maybe Sarutobi did, as he remained unaffected by the scowl directed at him. Instead, his brown eyes gazed at her with sympathy.

"What will you do with her now?" the older man asked. Rin was hurt and uncertain at the lack of acknowledgement to her presence, especially since it came from someone she respected, but she was also curious as to the answer. She did not understand yet what was happening.

"I'm keeping her as my personal doctor," Orochimaru said and, if Rin did not know any better, she would say he was pouting. "It's the reason why I killed her in the first place, after all."

Her heart skipped a beat.

"It's too delicate a position to leave to someone that can't be trusted," the dark-haired man continued. "I would have asked Tsunade, but then... it would be troublesome to have to deal with her fluctuating moods. This girl was the second best choice. She was the most knowledgeable and skilled in medicine after our beloved teammate, I hear."

_What was going on? _Tears flowed into Rin's eyes as a second wave of panic hit her. Her hopes were crushed and she was suddenly having a hard time breathing, feeling disgusted with herself. She moved her hands awkwardly, for the first time sensing that there was something not-quite-right with the way they moved and the chakra that flowed inside her body. She was horrified to notice that there were slowly-mending cracks on her skin.

"Orochimaru!" Sarutobi called out, something other than sadness finally colouring his tone. "Are you sure her mind is gone? She's crying."

"Hmph..." The Hokage squinted his eyes at her with disdain. "I told you that the Impure World Resurrection erased the target's memories and personalities when finished, but I still haven't completed this one." He pulled out a tagged kunai from under his robes. "The last step would be to insert this seal into the back of her head, but that would take away her ability to think creatively along with everything else, making her less efficient at her job. I'd rather have the best possible treatment and, as it is, she's already bound to my will. Nothing could possibly release her."

"Orochimaru..." the Sandaime whispered incredulously. He bridged the few steps that separated him from Rin and rested his hands on her shoulders. "Can you understand me, child?"

She sniffled and scrubbed the salty water from her purple-striped cheeks before replying, "Yes, sir..."

"Orochimaru!" he roared back at his student. "End the technique at once! This is too cruel! This is not what the Second Hokage intended his technique to be used for."

Rin trembled at the order. Wouldn't that kill her again? She did not want to die! She did not want to leave, knowing there was a chance she could see her friends again, but most of all, she was terrified of going through the experience of dying a second time.

She unconsciously laid a hand against her throat.

"Now, now, Sarutobi-sensei," Orochimaru smiled, coming closer and pulling Rin from the other's grasp. "I've given this little girl life! She was gone and, with my power, I was able to wrench her from Death itself and bring her back to this world!" He looked feverish with pleasure. "Wouldn't it be even more cruel now to destroy her again?"

Rin had never thought she would come to agree with the power-hungry tyrant on anything, but right now she was glad that he intended to keep her around, regardless of the unnatural circumstances.

"You've gone mad," Sarutobi whispered. He could not take his eyes off the snake summoner. "I had hoped that you could still be saved... You were my brightest, my dearest student - I thought of you as a son! - but what you're doing now is... what you've been doing is... What happened to you, Orochimaru? Can't you see how perverse this is? This is not who I taught you to be!"

The current Hokage was quiet as the words reverberated against the stone.

"I do this because I can. I am more powerful than you ever were so what is there to stop me?"

"You are not a god, Orochimaru..."

"No!" he interrupted, "I am greater than a god! I have subjugated the Nine-tails and bent the Death god to my will! Only fools like you would limit themselves once they have reached my level of power. Konoha is mine, its people are mine, and I will do as I please!"

Sarutobi did not respond. His son Asuma had been pleading with him for months now to wake up and see the Hokage for who he truly was. The two of them had had tremendous arguments on the subject that had invariably ended up with one or both of them storming out of the house and refusing to speak to each other for weeks. Hiruzen, better than anyone, understood that his student was ambitious, but when he had passed on the title of leader of the village to him, he had expected those ambitions to run side by side with what was best for Konoha. That was what he had taught him, after all - to keep the Will of Fire alive.

But as he thought back now and tallied all that had happened since Orochimaru's appointment, he started to regret being as inflexible in his position as he had been. Maybe his son had been in the right.

It had started with the end of the Third Shinobi World War – where Orochimaru had promptly dismissed the chance for a peaceful resolution and employed brutal tactics to crush their enemies – then worsened with the Nine-tailed fox's sealing – where dozens of lives had been lost at Orochimaru's whim to create a host who could better contain its power. The constrictive laws designed to keep the population in line were bad enough, but now Orochimaru had moved on to public executions. Between all that, Sarutobi no longer recognised the place he had shed blood, sweat and tears to protect.

He was only now realising his mistake, his arrogance when he had waved aside all the people who had tried to convey their concerns about his choice of successor years ago.

Orochimaru had one thing right: he was a fool.

Defeated, the old Hokage walked out of the chamber. He had nothing else to say to his former student and his heart was too weakened to do so anyway. He never noticed Rin's pleading gaze following him out the door, or heard Orochimaru's growled words to the ANBU hidden in the shadows.

"Watch him."


	7. Chapter 7

**Part VII:**

Obito groaned when heads started turning his way, like a ripple extending all the way to the front row. He did not think the whisper that had escaped him had been that loud, but, then again, he reminded himself that he was in a basement full of ninjas who were out to keep a secret. Next to him, he heard a faint _"ouch!" _and looked at Genma to find that the chuunin had tried to slap himself in the forehead and accidentally hit his broken nose in the process.

"Sorry," he apologised, not bothering to whisper this time. Genma just rolled his eyes.

"Uchiha!" The name sounded like an accusation and it came accompanied by several pointed fingers.

"How did he find us?"

"Who cares, we've all been made now!"

"We're dead... He lives with the Hand..."

"Kill him before he gets the chance to tattle!"

"People fall off bridges all the time."

Obito was seriously starting to sweat. He cast a nervous glance at Genma, but the chuunin was not moving a muscle and looked about as scared as Obito felt. Realising he was not going to get any help, the young Uchiha turned back to the assembled ninja and raised his hands in what he hoped was a reassuring gesture. He also put on his most charming smile.

"Hey, guys... can we please stop talking about death and stuff? You don't have to worry about me."

"Like hell we don't! You're an Uchiha. You work for the snake," the older ninja punctuated his accusation by spitting on the floor. None of those who were sitting next to him seemed to be bothered, so focused were they on keeping track of the intruder's every move.

"That's not true!" Obito argued, insulted. "I hate the bastard as much as anyone here!"

The tension in the room did not abate. The air was heavy and the heat of the scattered candles unbearable. No one seemed inclined to believe Obito.

"What's your name?" one asked.

"You idiot! Don't you know? That's Obito Uchiha. He was the Hand's student. He lives with him now!" someone else answered.

"He what...?" Genma squeaked, dropping his chewing senbon. The chuunin quickly put some more distance between him and Obito.

"Oh, great..." Obito groaned. He could feel the killing intent directed at him triple in intensity with the latest revelation of his identity. And he had just lost his one possible ally. He took a step back. "Uh... guys? Just hear me out, okay? Let's not get carried away here."

"And why should we listen to anything an Uchiha dog has to say?" The enquiry cut through the whispers and comments of the crowd easily. Asuma Sarutobi's powerful voice was not to be ignored.

Obito felt a stirring of hope. He knew Asuma from his Academy days. The other had been one year ahead of him. Their genin teams had gone on a few joint missions and they had been promoted to chuunin at the same time.

"Because you know me, Asuma, and you know I'm not like the rest of my family." He hoped that if Sarutobi remembered anything about him, it was that Obito had always been the black sheep of the Uchiha. "Besides, two days ago, that snake murdered my best friend. I'm looking to get revenge."

"Last I heard, Kakashi Hatake was alive and well."

Obito grit his teeth. He felt his anger rise as it always did when he heard that name being spoken out loud. His chakra responded instinctively and his Sharingan would have blazed to life if Obito had not reined it back. His intelligence was never one of his strong suits, but he doubted it would be a good idea to let it activate in a room full of suspicious people trying to decide whether or not to kill him.

"I'm talking about Rin. Kakashi has been dead to me for a long time."

There was some understanding in Asuma's eyes. Obito's shoulders eased and he almost sighed in relief when he saw the leaders of the rebel group share a nod. He would be given a chance to prove himself.

"Even if what you say is true, that you're on our side, you're still a danger to us," Shikaku Nara spoke. "You might be under surveillance. There's also Namikaze to worry about. You live in the same house as him and he's a hard man to fool."

"You don't have to worry about my sensei," Obito reported gladly. His teacher's reputation had been dragged through the mud ever since it had come out into the open that innocent villagers had been killed in the attempt to seal the Nine-tailed Fox into a new host. What the public refused to believe, though, was that the sacrifice had been set up by Orochimaru, without Minato's knowledge. They also did not know that the "attempt" had been successful and Minato's son had been the one to suffer the consequences. But that was a separate matter and one that Obito was sworn to keep a secret. Still, the young Uchiha never let slip a chance to help clear Minato's name. "He hates Orochimaru as much as I do. He's on our side."

There were several snorts in answer to that statement. One particular ninja just in front of Obito actually sneered. "Oh, yeah, I totally felt that hate WHEN HE CUT MY BROTHER'S THROAT OPEN."

Obito gulped. So perhaps he was not going to be able to convince anyone today that his teacher was a good man. He would try again some other time. He was a firm believer that persistence always won out in the end.

Meanwhile, Shikaku was shaking his head and sighing like the decision of whether or not to trust Obito was physically wearing him down. "Troublesome..."

"It could be a trap," Tsume Inuzuka warned. "The other dogs might have sent him to spy on us."

Asuma disagreed. "No, I've partnered up with Obito for missions before. We can trust him."

"But can we trust the Hand? Obito's intentions may be genuine, but it could be that he is being used himself," Hiashi Hyuuga countered and no one denied the suggestion.

Obito's hackles rose. He narrowed his eyes at the three that were insulting his teacher, but did his best to swallow his pride. He had already stated his case. He sneaked a glance at Genma to see if he would say anything in his favour, but the chuunin whose nose he had broken was quite content to let everyone else forget that he had been the one to bring in the unwanted new guy. Perhaps he should offer them all a proof of his good will, Obito thought.

"Whatever you decide about me, you should know that your plan is not going to work."

"Oh yeah?" Tsume took it as a threat and snarled at him accordingly.

Shikaku's response, however, leaned more towards curiosity. He tilted his head at Obito. "What makes you say that?"

"Orochimaru has another defence in place that you're not accounting for."

Heads turned throughout the room. Obito could almost hear their thoughts: "how much has he seen of our plans?" All of the rebel ninjas looked to their appointed leaders to take cues from their reactions. Shikaku was contemplating his words, looking at the plans they had taped to the wall to find out if there was any piece of vital intelligence there that he had missed during the planning stages. Asuma looked alarmed, but he seemed to have made his choice to trust Obito and take whatever he said seriously. Tsume was still snarling and Hiashi's expression had become impenetrable.

"What do you mean?" a new voice asked, thankfully without a trace of hostility. It was Chouza Akimichi.

"There's a chakra barrier around the Tower. Its source is practically inexhaustible," Obito said. He knew he was on shaky ground, sharing this kind of information. He did not want to reveal too much and end up putting Minato's son in danger. "Orochimaru can also tap into this chakra source to create jutsu, which makes him pretty damn powerful. Well, more powerful than what you're counting on, in any case."

"Asuma?" Shikaku prompted, looking for confirmation.

"I gave you all the information I had from when my old man was still in power. I wouldn't have access to the plans of any new defences the snake might have put in place since then."

Shikaku processed the information and then turned back to Obito. "How did you find out about this, then?"

"I live with the Hand, remember?" he said sarcastically. If they were going to doubt him, they might as well keep track of their reasons for doing so.

Hisses and accusations once again spread throughout the assembled ninja at the mention of Minato's title. It bothered Obito to no end.

"You know what? Forget it." The Uchiha threw up his hands in defeat. "I shouldn't have come here. This is never going to work." He turned around to make for the stairs that led to the exit. "I'm out of here."

"Hold it right there," Hiashi called out. His tone of voice was so cold that Obito actually obeyed. There was a warning there that the Uchiha had better look out for his well-being.

"Look, everything I said still holds, but I can see my presence here isn't helping any." Obito told them. Then, suddenly feeling mischievous, he added, "If you need anything, Genma there knows where to find me."

The blond chuunin covered his nose protectively and shrunk on himself, trying to make himself invisible to the piercing stares that turned his way.

"Good luck! You're going to need it."

Having said that, Obito started climbing the stairs. He had not gone but four steps up when a kunai flew to lodge itself in the wall right in front of him. Hiashi had thrown it. Obito paused to consider the Hyuuga for a moment then continued on his way.

It was not an outright death threat. Just Hiashi's way of saying that Obito had better not expose them, or else.


	8. Chapter 8

**Part VIII:**

Obito did not start running the moment the cool evening air hit his face again and if he was walking a little faster than usual, it was only because it was getting late and Minato might worry that something had happened to him. Not that it had. Not that it would. If Obito was being extra careful and looking over his shoulder a little more often than usual, it was only because every day he became a better ninja and paranoia was a tried and true way of ensuring that he would get to have that next day in which to improve further. As rash as Obito was, he could do with a little more paranoia.

It had nothing at all to do with making sure that there were no Hyuugas on his tail or with being freaked out of his mind over what he had learned. Not a chance. His knees were definitely not shaking and his accelerated breath rate was perfectly excusable. He had exerted himself fleeing up those secret hideaway stairs. No, not fleeing - climbing. Climbing those stairs.

He was in control. Everything was normal. No way did he just not know what to think about anything any more.

As that thought occurred to him, he stopped.

He stood in the middle of the street, calming down and watching the world and the people move around him. Night had yet to descend fully, but the street lights in major arteries were already twinkling away. On the surface, it was a familiar sight, but Obito could not help but feel that there was now an additional layer superimposed over the tranquil image, a strangeness in the air that had not been present before. The lights seemed feeble, insufficient to chase away the coming darkness, and the buildings made him feel unwelcome, streaked as they were with jagged shadows. Every time someone passed by him, Obito tensed, half expecting them to read into his thoughts and accuse him of treason or something. His mind was abuzz, cataloguing every roof, alley and dark corner as a possible hiding place, ripe with danger.

A blurb of laughter coming from a passing couple pulled him from his agitated thoughts. He took a deep breath, told himself there was nothing to be done about his fears and resumed walking.

He was tougher than this, he told himself. Losing Rin had been a devastating blow, but he had to get over it. Meeting Genma had shook him. He had been tipsy and still drowning in the sadness that going through Rin's belongings had left him with, but the prospect of gaining a new ally had spurred him onwards. What the chuunin had ended up showing him, however, was larger than he had anticipated. He had not expected to discover just how upside down the village was, how close to collapsing on itself.

The Hokage, who was supposed to be the best of the best, someone everyone in the village should strive to emulate, an inspiration and a guide, was nothing but a murdering bastard and a betrayer of Konoha's trust. He had no love for his charges and had no trouble with disposing of those who had sworn loyalty to him. He was as far removed from the ideals Obito had been taught to believe in as the sun from the moon.

Then there was the Uchiha military police, the supposed keepers of peace and order in the village. His clan had always been a point of pride for Obito and he had spent most of his life chasing after their approval. Now he only felt betrayed that those he had aspired to be like could have participated in something as twisted as that public execution.

Learning that there was a rebellion should have been a relief, if only he had not found out about it a mere two days after his world had fallen to pieces. Now he had to deal with the knowledge that most people in the village were hiding behind a facade. Whatever happened to the bonds of trust and camaraderie and kinship he had believed bound him to his fellow Konoha ninjas?

Obito suppressed a small bubble of hysterical laughter and forced himself to stop thinking so hard about it. He was tired and ruining the one piece of good news he had had all week. If the major clans of Konoha were on the same side as him and Minato, it had just become a lot easier to act on their plans to avenge Rin and free Konoha of Orochimaru's influence.

He made it back home in record time, plagued by doubt all the way to the doorstep. He slipped his keys into the keyhole and turned the knob, but was stumped when the door did not budge. After several more failed attempts, he started to get annoyed, until he heard Minato's voice on the other side.

"Who is it?"

"Hey, it's me," he said against the wood, frustrated. "Open up. My key's not working."

There came a noise, like something heavy being dragged aside, before the door cracked open and Minato's sunny head peaked out with a welcoming smile and a dark smudge on his cheek. Just as it had always done before, the familiar sight soothed Obito. His teacher was a constant he could rely on and, right now, Obito did not care how many times his family had judged him for being too dependant on the man. More than anything, he was grateful for the stability his sensei's presence afforded him.

"Hey, there," Minato greeted him. "Don't freak out when you come in. I've made some changes to the living room."

Armed with that mild warning, Obito made his way inside, expecting to see the broken coffee table gone and the couch and bookshelf in different positions to cover up the remaining empty space. Instead, he found every surface in sight - from ceiling to carpet and the spines of the books on display - covered in splotchy, black writing.

_Fuuinjutsu_, Obito thought with a gulp and a helpless glance at Minato. He hated fuuinjutsu. Even the medical seals and scrolls Rin had used to fix deeper, more serious wounds had left him uncomfortable. It was a feeling he had had ever since he was a child. His brothers had had lots of fun terrorising him with awful stories about ninja accidentally blowing themselves up at the smallest slip of the brush and, now that he was older, had the Sharingan and had actually had the chance to observe Minato working on his seals, he knew exactly the kind of power the smallest smudge could contain. It was the kind of power that could put things into and out of existence.

He forced himself not to whimper as he turned around and saw his sensei push a cabinet in front of the door, effectively closing the encirclement of seals. Obito spared a glance at the keys still in his hand. _That explains that, I guess._

"What the hell is all this?" he asked in a small voice.

Minato's grin was unrepentant. He walked past Obito and up to the middle of the living room with open arms, spinning in place to cast a pleased look at the walls all around. "This is a small scale replica of the seal holding the Nine-tail's chakra in Naruto."

How could Obito have just thought that Minato was reliable? Dependable? A comfort and a joy to be around? He took it all back.

"Are you crazy? You're using the Nine-tail's chakra here?"

"Relax, Obito. I'm not using any kind of chakra on it. This is a static seal; it's not active and it's not going to be activated. Think of it as a giant smudge of ink. Its only purpose is to allow us to study the seal and find a weakness we might exploit... which I believe I have."

The statement did not put the young Uchiha any more at ease, but the pride in Minato's voice and his accomplished smile were enough to shift Obito's thoughts from nervous to curious.

"You have?"

"Oh, yes. I stayed with Naruto yesterday and spent all of last night memorising the seal, analysing its every little detail and splitting it into its fundamental components. I went over every symbol and every small way in which they contributed to the overall result and I believe that that..." - Minato's intense gaze turned to the wall on Obito's right, to a handful of symbols written a little above eye-level that had been circled out and highlighted - "... is going to be our key to bringing down Orochimaru."

"You found a way to disable the barrier?" Obito asked.

"And to cut off Orochimaru from the Nine-tail's chakra," Minato added.

Excitement rushed Obito. Somehow, things were coming together. First the discovery of the rebellion, now Minato's breakthrough. Bit by bit, every tool Minato and him needed to succeed was appearing in their path. Had Obito just been despairing over the fact that the world around him was collapsing? Oh no, he realised. He could not have been farther from the truth. It was coming together. The thought made him giddy.

"But I thought it couldn't be done," Obito wondered. "You helped design the seal yourself!"

"Well, that's the thing, actually. I thought the seal was flawless too, but it's because Orochimaru modified it and contributed to its placement that the flaw is there. He did a rushed job and forgot to consider all of the implications and possible outcomes of the symbols he used."

Obito was not one to consider deeper meanings, but even he could see that there was something poetic about that. His grin widened. Unexpectedly, though, Minato's faded somewhat.

"This weakness is not going to be easy to use, though. And, to be honest, I'm still only theorising that it's there. I was hoping you could help me confirm it with your Sharingan?"

"Sure, just tell me what you need me to do," Obito immediately responded.

He pushed chakra into his eyes until he felt his bloodline limit activate. The room suddenly came to life around him with the golden yellow of Minato's chakra. If his teacher had not just guaranteed him that the seal was inactive, Obito would have never guessed. It was certainly not a dead splotch of ink as he had been told. The yellow chakra was flowing from symbol to symbol, travelling across each line and circling the room, trapped in an infinite loop. If Obito had not been so wary of fuuinjutsu, he might have called it beautiful.

Under Minato's direction, he focused on the portion of the seal they had been discussing and examined the few characters that were supposed to be faulty.

"I'm sorry, sensei... I don't see anything particularly different about the way the chakra is flowing here."

"Are you sure? It would not be obvious, only a minor discrepancy, a snag, if you will."

Obito inspected each component at a time, his respect for his teacher's skill tripling as he slowly came to realise that calling them individual symbols was incorrect. Each seemed to be composed of tinier, interwoven components that forced the chakra to swirl in miniature loops through the paths of the brush strokes before making its way to the next symbol. How Minato had managed to paint in that level of intricacy was beyond him.

He decided to push a little more chakra into his Sharingan to sharpen his eyesight and study the fundamental components of each symbol. They were so small that it was hard to see the actual path that the chakra took underneath the yellow glow. He felt he was close to success, though - there was something different about the third symbol down, although he could not pinpoint what it was yet - and so he willed a little more chakra into his eyes and pushed his Sharingan to the limit.

What happened next was entirely unexpected.

Something slid into place in Obito's eyes and his vision became impossibly clear. The snag that Minato had been talking about was suddenly as obvious as Guy's eyebrows. The wood panels from the living room wall started blurring soon after, though, contours warping as if hot air was rising in front of them, and Obito worried that he had pushed himself too hard. When the image started spinning on itself, like it was being flushed down a drain, he was not sure if what he was seeing was real or just a product of his overtaxed mind.

Desperate to avoid giving himself chakra exhaustion, he closed his eyes and cut back on the chakra. When he opened them again, everything was back to normal, except Obito could now see into his bedroom through a round hole in the wall.

He heard Minato gasp next to him. He himself did not move, afraid that it might trigger another episode of whatever that had been.

"Obito, your eyes!" the blond drew his attention. Minato was looking disturbed and shocked and Obito was sure that that could not be a good sign.

Slowly, Obito pulled his goggles from his head to look at his reflection. The orange plastic was not an ideal reflective surface, but he saw enough to send him running towards the bathroom to get a better look at his eyes.

The sight that greeted him in the mirror was not that of the regular Sharingan with the three black tomoe he had grown accustomed to, but rather one with a far more sinister shape. The tomoe had grown to cover the better part of the red irises and joined together in a sort of hooked shuriken.

Obito felt himself go faint.


	9. Chapter 9

**Part IX**

Rin was not sure what to do. It had been a small eternity since Orochimaru and Sarutobi had been to see her and the silence and solitude were starting to become oppressive.

She had paced the length and width of the cell she was confined to and inspected every stone, pipe and fixture in the small room. The walls were rough, but thick and well put together. The water and electricity pipes running across the ceiling were not as impervious to tampering, but Rin had yet to decide if she really wanted to bring attention to herself by doing so. She could rupture them to create a small flood or set her thin bed-sheet on fire to force the guards to intervene. The problem was that she did not know if she was important enough to be bothered with - they had already killed her once and little had been shown in the way of remorse - or what she wanted to do if they did come. Escape was not an option - she was a skilled medic, but nowhere near strong enough to be a match for ANBU ninja - and she was wondering if perhaps being confined and forgotten like this was not better than what awaited her once Orochimaru remembered he had brought her there for a reason.

On top of that, her body still felt strange to her. She had had time now to go over some basic exercises to test her muscle and chakra responses and, while at a first glance the results were impeccable, she could tell that something was very wrong with her beneath the surface. She had the same agility and strength as before, the same ability to manipulate chakra; she could do everything she could remember being able to do, but the body did not feel like her own and neither did the chakra. When she touched the walls, her brain registered that there were bumps and edges on the unpolished stone, but she did not feel them with her skin. It was a foreign and alien sensation, like being in control of someone else's body from a distance.

The thought had scared her when it had first occurred to her. Was that it? Had someone else died so she could live? Were they still there with her, somewhere deep inside, blissfully asleep or perhaps awake and terrified that their body no longer obeyed them due to the presence of her conscience? If so, she was filled with shame at the relief she had felt back when she had realised that she could breathe again and at the overwhelming fear that made her want to cling to this second chance at life even now.

The guilt, the relief, the wonder and the boredom went around in circles in her head. One led to another and then another still, until she found that her thoughts had gone right back to the starting point: what should she do? Despairing that she was getting nowhere, she waited. The Hokage had said he wanted to put her medical skills to use, so sooner or later something was bound to happen. Instead, she filled her head with thoughts of her friends and drew the courage to sit and push back her guilt from them.

She hoped Obito had not gotten himself arrested or worse for trying to help her. She also hoped he had not done anything stupid since her disappearance, although she was sure that that was a vain hope, knowing him. She smiled, thinking of how he had once defied Kakashi's orders to save her, during the last world war.

Team Minato had been given the mission to sneak behind enemy lines and sabotage the Iwa ninjas' supply route by blowing up the Kannabi Bridge in Grass Country. Rin, Kakashi and Obito had gone in secret to the bridge, while their teacher engaged the Iwa ninjas at the front to divert their attention from the infiltration group. The mission seemed doomed to failure after Rin was captured and Kakashi and Obito went their separate ways after an argument. Kakashi had insisted on continuing the mission, while Obito went back to save her. Luckily, their teacher had been relieved by Orochimaru's sudden appearance on the battleground and rushed back just in time to bring the team back together, defeat the enemies who had ambushed them and complete the mission without any further incident.

Back then, Obito's refusal to leave a teammate behind could have gotten him labeled as a missing nin, had their teacher and team captain been anyone else. She hoped he had learned something since then, or rather, that he had learned not to take such risks again without thinking first. She had known Obito long enough to know that his loyalty to his friends, absolute to a fault, was too much a part of him to ever lose. Considering that she was sure he thought of her as more than a friend and that the situation was much more dangerous this time, she hoped he was all right. Her only comfort was knowing that Minato would look out for him.

Minato was someone else she drew strength from. She was sorry that work had kept her from seeing him as much lately, but she had never forgotten about the bright blond man who had inspired her to become the best kunoichi she could be. According to Obito, time and circumstances had not been kind to him. Although she did not know the full story of his problems - Obito had refused to share, saying that Minato had made him swear not to and that she should just ask him herself if she wanted to know - she knew enough to understand why his eyes had lost some of their shine, starting with what had happened with Kakashi.

Now there was a subject she could not discuss with Obito. When it came to Minato, he asked the world to disregard all the hard evidence that said that their teacher was anything other than a good man, but then he refused to do the same when she asked it of him in regards to Kakashi. She had not seen her white-haired teammate in a long time, partly because Obito had asked her not to, in sympathy towards Minato, but mostly because her work tended to rob her of all free time. In truth, she doubted her teacher would mind if she spoke to their other teammate, but Obito - again, loyal to a fault - had decided that Kakashi's betrayal was too serious to ever be forgiven.

A few tears sprung in her eyes. How she wished she could go back to those times when her teammates had gotten along, when getting them to stop their stupid arguments was the biggest of her concerns.

She made up her mind then that maybe she had waited long enough. It was time she stopped thinking about what had been and just did something about what was.

**o**

Words could not describe the pain that struck Obito all at once. He dare say it was what getting stabbed in the eyes with a blunt kunai might feel like. At some point, Minato had joined him in the bathroom and had wrapped an arm beneath his arms to support his weight.

"Are you okay, Obito?" his sensei asked.

The obvious answer was "no", but the young Uchiha took some time to think over why that was so. He had been fine only a second ago. Other than the shock of finding that his eyes had suddenly changed, and was that a lot to take in!, he had not felt any physical changes take place. Now his eyes felt like they were about to fall off his head.

"Yeah... I think so."

"What happened?" Minato asked, reluctant to let go of him just yet.

He, Obito Uchiha, the loser, had just awakened the freaking Mangekyou Sharingan, that's what happened! Obito had to laugh at the thought of that.

"Obito? Is everything all right with your Sharingan?"

Ok, so maybe Obito's laughter had come off as a little bit too hysterical to soothe his sensei's worries.

"Just fine. More than fine, actually. I think... I think I just awoke the Mangekyou Sharingan..." he said, a healthy dose of awe seeping through his voice.

"Mangekyou..." Minato repeated. "I didn't know there were other types of Sharingan."

"Yeah... makes sense that you wouldn't."

"Some sort of clan secret?"

Again, Obito had to laugh. It could not be a good sign that he did not find it the least bit strange that that would be his sensei's first assumption. Great proof of the unity between the clans that made up Konoha, right there.

"Not really, we just don't talk much about it, that's all. The Mangekyou is supposed to be a superior form of Sharingan, the next step in its evolution, you could say."

"'Supposed to be'?"

The pain was fading rapidly and Obito was starting to feel more confident that his legs could hold him again. He leaned against the bathroom sink and turned around to face his teacher. So far so good: the pain did not return.

"It's sort of... legendary?" Obito explained, half embarrassed, half proud out of his mind. "It's said that only a handful of people - well... less than a handful of people have ever awakened the Mangekyou Sharingan in the entire history of the clan. The last Uchiha believed to have possessed it was Madara Uchiha himself."

Minato mulled over Obito's words, while the younger man tried to get used to the idea. One thing was to have thought that was what his different shape of eyes meant, another was to confirm it aloud. When the rest of his clan found out what he had accomplished, they were going to be even more freaked out about it than he was. But should he even tell them about it? Did he want to earn their quick respect through something he had had no control over himself?

"The information the clan has on the subject says that the Mangekyou only awakens under 'special circumstances'. I wish I'd asked what they were so I'd know what it was I did right to get this thing."

Minato let go of Obito, as it looked like he had finally recovered himself enough. His eyes, however, did not stop assessing him for any signs of injury. "I heard once," he said, carefully picking up where Obito had left off, "that it was Madara's power that drove him to madness. Do you know if there are any risks to your health that come from possessing that type of Sharingan?"

Obito knew nothing of the subject. His knowledge was limited to a few bits and pieces he had come across years ago, when he was just a young boy convinced that reading up all on all that he could find about the Sharingan would help him obtain it. He had been about twelve years old at that point and desperate that he would never activate his clan's eye technique.

"I don't know that much about it... I'm not sure if anyone does, actually. Like I said, it's sort of considered nothing more than a legend, these days."

"Can you be sure that's what it is then? Maybe something else is wrong. Using the Sharingan has never caused you pain before."

The moment Minato suggested it, Obito knew it could not be so. Even if the experience had been brief, he had felt the overwhelming power contained in those shuriken-shaped eyes. Not only did they match the descriptions of the Mangekyou he had read, they had felt right. They had felt his. Like he had opened a door into a part of himself that he had been unaware of until now. There had to be some other explanation for the pain.

"I don't know how to explain it, but I'm sure. It's got to be the Mangekyou. And I was a bit tired before I got here. These eyes just used up more chakra than I was expecting. I guess it drained me a bit..."

Obito was not sure that that was all that had happened and, by the looks of it, Minato was not convinced either. Still, his fatigue was undeniable and his teacher could see it too.

"Maybe you should go lie down, then. Get some sleep. I'll wake you up tomorrow and tell you about the next part of my plan."

Obito shot him a grateful look. A warm bed and a few hours of sleep to reconcile his thoughts sounded like just the thing he needed at the moment.

**o**

A pair of ANBU walked into the cell just as Rin was preparing to move the mattress closer to the section of wiring she had decided was best suited to cause a short-circuit. She had meant to start a fire in the corner farthest from the door, but it seemed her jailors were not as ignorant of her doings as they had led her to think.

"Finally, someone shows up," she blurted out. Under normal circumstances, she would never had said something like that, but she figured this was no time to be her regular shy self and tried to come up with something her teammates might say. If the ANBU had orders to kill her, they would do so regardless of what she said or did, and if they did not, then they had no reason to harm her either way. What mattered was that any reaction she might pull out of those two might give her a clue as to what was coming. "Can you tell me what's going on? What do you want with me?"

The ANBU positioned themselves precisely on either side of the door, the very figure of professional detachment. "Right now, we want you to come with us," the one on the left said. She was a kunoichi, although Rin could not identify the owner of the voice.

Rin's fake bluster was starting to die out in the face of their impassiveness. "And where are you taking me?"

"Elsewhere," was her answer.

In the end, it did not matter where they took her, as long as it wasn't another windowless, dark prison cell, and Rin did not think there would be a point in doing that when she was already so comfortable in this one.

She took a step forward. "All right then. Lead the way."

As the three climbed from the lower levels and the walls around them went from being bare stone to wood-panelled with a red trim, it suddenly dawned on Rin where she was exactly. "We're in the Hokage Tower?" It probably should not surprise her as much as it did, given the few people she had seen since she had awoken, but it was strange for her to think that she was at the heart of her village and yet so alone.

The ANBU made no comment, but her guess was soon confirmed when they took her through a corridor with a view into a small inner courtyard she had passed by often on her way to report at the Hokage's office. She would have liked to stay a few moments to watch the flowers, but was escorted up the stairs to the next level before she could think to ask.

"Is 'elsewhere' still inside the building?" she wondered. It had occurred to her that they might just come across someone who knew her, but she did not expect an answer, which was why she was doubly surprised when she heard a "yes" behind her in what she swore was a familiar male voice.

She wanted to turn around to take a better look at the second ANBU who had been quiet so far, but the unknown kunoichi in front of her chose that exact moment to reach their destination. She pulled open a door and stepped aside, gesturing for Rin to enter.

The young medic crossed the threshold into one of the best-equipped labs she had ever seen. There were cabinets full of chemicals, herbs, petri dishes and phials and all kinds of products she might conceivably need to create any type of drug. A separate wall contained carefully labelled stabilising scrolls of varying sizes to apply to different combinations of body area and damage. She could put a name to every piece of equipment laid out on top of several tables, gurneys and trolleys. She was familiar with them from regular use at the Hospital, although the items in this large room looked pristine. The entire room looked like it could have been a part of the Hospital, in fact, except for one small detail: there was only one bed for one patient. And Orochimaru was currently sitting on it.

He got up and straightened his white robes once her gaze settled on him.

"I can tell by the look in your eyes that your new accommodations please you."

He laughed in such a self-satisfied way that Rin berated herself for the open wonder she had studied the room with. She would have preferred not giving that evil man the pleasure of her unintentional flattery. She did her best to keep a neutral expression on her face as he came closer, but could not avoid a surprised gasp when his hand reached out for hers in a flash-movement. He did not even ask permission before pushing up her sleeve and inspecting her arm.

"Yes... there's still some slight discoloration, but the scaling's gone. The regenerating effect seems to have kicked in at last..." he appraised, making her feel like something kept in formaldehyde. "How do you feel?"

She had to consciously unstuck her tongue from the roof of her mouth to answer. "Fine, Lord Hokage."

"Good," he said, although, if his widened smirk was any indication, she had a feeling he meant it more in relation to her use of his title rather than her well-being. "You should consider yourself privileged. I've bestowed a rare and precious gift on you: a body that will never grow old or die. It will never know disease and if it should suffer any accident, it will simply heal and regenerate itself. Are you grateful, little Rin?"

With all her heart, she wanted to say no. "Yes, Lord Hokage."

"I expect nothing short of your absolute loyalty in return, otherwise I will be forced to take measures. Are we clear on that?"

Rin looked into his snake eyes for an instant, before lowering her gaze and bending into a bow. Realising that that was all the response he was going to get, he continued to speak.

"To more practical affairs, then. I have high expectations for you. I was told you were the best medic in the village."

"I... I wouldn't know, Lord Hokage," she murmured, although Orochimaru did not look like he was listening for an answer.

"You will be my personal physician from now on. In addition to that, I also expect you to use your medical knowledge to assist me in a set of experiments I am currently conducting." While Rin went over the possible implications of those words, the Hokage grabbed a scroll and a sealed container marked with the word "Juugo" and placed them on the work table before her. "Here is your first assignment. Analyse this tissue sample and find out all there is to know about it. You should find it very interesting. The rest of the information is in the scroll. I look forward to hear all about what you discover when I return in a couple of days."

It was not much to go on and Orochimaru's twisted logic had her worried about the kind of thing he might find interesting. Longing to be released from his piercing gaze, however, Rin just nodded. He had to be able to see the fear in her eyes, but did not comment or threaten her further. Instead, he gave her a disturbing pat on her tattooed cheek.

"Good girl," he said, then walked out of the room.

The atmosphere in the room lightened considerably as the Hokage's robes swished out of sight and Rin had to suppress the urge to sigh in relief. There were still two ANBU present, she reminded herself.

The kunoichi silently followed Orochimaru out the door, while her companion stayed a little longer. He was looking at Rin and now that she had him in her sight again, she was suddenly reminded of the familiar voice that had spoken to her on the way to this lab.

"Kakashi?" With the wild grey hair and single eye-hole in a dog mask, it really could not be anyone else.

His hands twitched towards his ceramic mask, but he made no further move other than to bow his head. "I'm sorry," he said and this time she had no trouble recognising the voice.

She would have liked him to stay, to talk or perhaps cry on his shoulder for a minute, but, as efficient and dutiful as ever, he left to rejoin the other ANBU. Still, his words and his presence made all the difference to her. She was no longer alone.


End file.
